Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Frank Turner - Sleep is for the Week

So, perhaps you all know of this man. Perhaps not. He seems to be attracting a fair amount of critical attention. His self description runs as follows: "I like to consider myself part of a wider continuum of UK-based folk-influenced music."

Frank Turner's songs start out sounding like misplaced Oasis B-sides, but the lyrics are surprising and catchy, and the melodies are full of as many surprises as Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island (and they are surprising in the same way: the sudden soaring up an octave and the unexpected dropping down one, the long, lovely sustained notes, etc.). It's just him singing and playing a guitar. Neat, me thinks. Your thoughts?

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Winehouse Part 2

Ok, I think I'm obsessed. I've just spent the last hour listening to all these solo acoustic songs on myspace and she's so fucking awesome!! There's all these videos of her singing while sitting in this retro green chair with some acoustic guitar player that we can't see for some tv show or something...and most especially, you should check out "you know I'm no good" amazing! I'm excited like I was about Feist or Cat Power...it's been awhile. The funniest thing is that when she sings she sounds like a old black american blues singer from the 1960's, but when she speaks in interviews, she sounds like sporty spice!Here's another picture of this hot mama...wait, who the hell says "hot mama" anymore? Well, I'm bringing it back, baby!I think she looks like her majesty P.J. Harvey in this pic...

Monday, April 02, 2007

OH MAI GAHD!

Eurovision!!! There's about one month until the Semi-Final and a record 28 songs have made it! 28, wow! Eurovision, wow!!!

Neophytes to the brilliance that is this song contest really should go here so the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS "Song-O-Mat" (Finland spent the money it would take to afford the "ic" on Lordi's costumes last year) can tell them which song is their favourite. It's actually against the rules of Eurovision to just pick for yourself, and the rules of Eurovision are also more or less the law according to the European government. Or so I hear.

In any case, though at first I felt I should support Andorra's entry as it's in my language (waaaaaah!), it was actually too stupid to even handle. Like there's hilarious-Eurovision-stupid and then there's...this, which is just stupid.

So after I fasted for a week due to that little upset I continued my search for a favourite, and for a while decided that they're all just too hilarious this year. What with classically Eurovision song titles such as "LovePower", "Get A Life - Get Alive" and "Time to Party", and delightfully foreign/confused/out-of-date videos like this and this, it looks like Helsinki is going to host a really freaking solid Eurovision 2007...those 28 entries sure all do deserve to be here!

But finally, I settled on Teapacks' "Push The Button" (Isreal's entry), which at first worried me a bit because I'd heard, in passing, that it was actually going to be a genuinely good song? But no, no, thankfully, I'd heard wrong, and it was justly terrible and hence, AMAZING. Not only that, it looks as if these gypsies may be banned this year, because their groundbreaking Klezmer-meets-hard-rock-ish-techno is just a little to controversial, eh? Also I guess people were bit confused by random use of scat in inappropriate places, the singer's awkward torso-rocking, and the vaguely inuendo-ish sound of the group's name.